Luke 8

Luke 8 is one of the busiest chapters in the Gospels, and it begins with a detail only Luke gives: the movement was funded by women. Mary Magdalene, freed from seven demons, Joanna, whose husband ran Herod's household, Susanna, and many others paid the bills as Jesus went from town to town. Then the parable that Jesus said explains all the others. A farmer flings seed, and it lands on a path, on rock, among thorns, and on good ground, and what happens next depends entirely on the ground. The seed, he explains, is the word of God, and the soils are hearts, and the only one that bears a crop is the one that hears, holds on, and keeps going. After that, four events in quick succession show what the word can do. A storm on the lake, a boat filling with water, disciples screaming that they are dying, and a man who wakes up, tells the wind to stop, and asks them where their faith is. A naked man living among tombs, chained and breaking chains, possessed by a legion, who ends the story clothed and sane at Jesus' feet, sent home to tell his town what God did. A woman who has bled for twelve years and spent everything on doctors, who touches the edge of his cloak in a crowd and is called out of hiding to be called daughter. And a synagogue ruler's twelve-year-old girl, dead before Jesus reaches the house, who hears him say child, get up, and gets up hungry. Who is this, the disciples ask in the boat. The chapter is the answer.